


vulnerary

by smithens



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Christmas, Cricket, Drabble Sequence, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Military, Nurses & Nursing, Post-World War I, Servants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21928369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: The war ends. Thomas Barrow makes wise monetary choices and moves to York.And yet, he can't quite get away from Downton Abbey.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow & Anna Bates, Thomas Barrow & Phyllis Baxter, Thomas Barrow & Richard Clarkson, Thomas Barrow & Sarah O'Brien, Thomas Barrow & Sybil Crawley, Thomas Barrow/Chris Webster, Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 46
Kudos: 272





	1. 1918 - 1922

**Author's Note:**

> vulnerary, noun. "a medicine used in the healing of wounds."

"You would have to leave Downton."

"Can't say I'd mind that especially, sir, not when there isn't another option."

Across from him, standing at his desk putting all of his weight on his hands, imposing, Major Clarkson raises his eyebrows.

"Isn't there?"

 _The hell is that supposed to mean,_ Thomas thinks, but he manages to swallow most of his annoyance.

"I don't know what you mean, sir," he says, coolly.

He'll be glad to be rid of this place once and for all… then, he told himself that when this all started, didn't he, and look where it got him.

*

He's one of two men in his class, and the other is years older than he is and married with children. They regard one another with begrudging respect, don't speak unless they have to.

Thomas isn't here to make friends.

Not with him, at least, and absolutely not with the women — some of whom fawn over him, twee and twittering. The rest whisper when he passes, and he finds himself more often than not ending the day in his boarding house thinking about Nurse Crawley, and how she was the only one at the cottage hospital who didn't do either.

*

The post comes at the same time every day, and when there's something for him it isn't much, but it's always his, and he always reads it alone.

From the back of an envelope one morning three lions scowl at him, menacing; he almost burns the thing without opening it. What stops him is the penmanship, the educated, loopy curls he's seen before only on medical charts and triage tags. 

The cheque covers what his tuition cost and more. He shouldn't accept it, doesn't need bloody handouts, but she calls it a gift.

And those don't come often, do they.

*

"Thank you, Sergeant; we'll be in contact."

And they are.

Not exactly what he wanted, to be back in the military, but it's all he can get. He's lucky.

When he hears halfway into his first week that Doctor Clarkson put in a good word for him, he grips the tray he's holding so tightly its edge digs into his palm, painful. That's his past, Downton catching up to him, and he's not looking to be in debt to anyone, so he may as well quit and try his luck elsewhere…

…but that would be very stupid, then, wouldn't it.

*

O'Brien writes him, sometimes, and he writes back. They're both infrequent with it: he's not in the trenches at the Front; not clinging to her for a lifeline, and he gets the impression she's not all that happy with his leaving. But it's a connection of sorts, and though he's got others now, men his own age, working class men who've never seen the inside of a great house in their lives, he keeps it up. 

As time goes on, though, he finds he cares less and less about Downton Abbey. 

He's not got a horse in the race anymore.

*

He finds out about it from the papers.

She'd written to him from Ireland, and he'd written back, but what they shared didn't exactly make for happy memories. When they fell out of touch it came from a mutual desire to move forward, to put the past behind them.

After he goes into the ward that night, red-eyed and sniffly, head throbbing, cheeks aching, they send him back home, tell him to report in again the minute he's well, rest in the meantime. Can't risk infecting patients with whatever he's got. 

It makes him feel like a fucking head case.

*

That night he sleeps for fifteen hours straight, and more the next day. After that, he feels all right, and he's still got his job and tasks and duties at the end of it. A sense of purpose. If he were still a servant, he'd have had to work all through it, exhaust himself with nothing for it in the end, but he hasn't been a servant for six years now. 

He goes back to Downton for the service anyway, wearing day clothes: a suitjacket, trousers and a tie. Dark gray and black.

Naked.

He wishes he were in uniform.

*

Somehow, he makes friends in York. It takes him two years, but he does.

They'd all scarper if they knew about him. They don't. He knows how to keep a secret. Better men than him have lost everything over this, and he keeps his work and life separate, his other life under lock and key.

It's a city, after all. Not like Manchester or Liverpool, certainly not like London; he can't be completely anonymous, but it _is_ a city. He chooses his lot wisely: a railway man here, a factory worker there.

Nice blokes.

Couldn't care less about Burke's Peerage.

*

The thing about working in palliative care in a military hospital is people die on you.

Not only do they die on you, you're not even supposed to do anything about it — and yet he's good at it, somehow. There's something to it, keeping people well while they're alive, easing pain and suffering, whatever. Most of them are fighters, and that makes it easier. Probably an advantage of it being military, really, that they are.

Some of them aren't.

But none of them are Lieutenant Courtenay, and the war's over. It's different now.

He doesn't realise how much he's changing.

*

Every year at Downton there's a cricket match; every year there's a whole bloody drama about it.

 _I thought little else of it til the police turned up,_ O'Brien writes, and he writes back, _are you lying to me too, now?_

But he would be lying himself if the thought didn't please him, Bates getting out of prison only to go right back in again, no matter what Lord Grantham had to say about it. Not everyone has to bow down to His Lordship.

Encouraging thought.

Except that he'd rather get himself shot again than ever go into law enforcement.

*

The letter gets him thinking about other things, too.

"…I'll ask around."

"Thanks."

"Have to say, Sergeant, you never did strike me as the sporting type."

He closes a filing cabinet with unnecessary force.

 _You are not fifteen,_ he has to remind himself.

"Why's that, Corporal?"

"Dunno," comes the reply. "Guess I always assume we're not, being on this side of things. Whole rugby team out of my school went for the infantry, in the war… dunno anything about cricket, myself, but someone might."

"If you don't know, don't bother," Thomas says. But he's kinder in saying it than before.

*

A friend of a friend gets him onto a team. It's the end of the season; his first match is their last.

One rival bowler is the most handsome man he's ever seen.

Thomas makes an excellent impression — his best athletic performances always do tend to come when he's frustrated — and he doesn't even ruin his good work by putting them all off of him. He's in an excellent mood.

Until the bowler takes a woman in a floral day dress with a ring on her left hand into his arms, and he's reminded very suddenly of what he isn't.

*

It turns out that the end of the season doesn't matter; they practise all through winter. He might be the most fit he's ever been in his life, even taking the war into account. It's incredible, bowling and batting and running several evenings out of the week, all of them just working lads finding time for the little things that make life worth living. The things he never could have done in service, the things that fell by the wayside in the war — what he liked doing when he was a boy, really. What he eventually had to give up.

*

At the hospital people respect him because he's good at the work he does, and he realises at some point that when you add it all together, he's spent more of his life looking after dying men than distinguished ones.

It makes a world of difference. He can't get too comfortable, he knows it's all likely to come crashing down around him eventually, but even if he spends all of his days saying "yes sir" and "no sir" and being subservient and dutiful and whatnot, there are people underneath him doing the same thing.

He's got influence, one might say.

*

He's also got a hale dose of stupidity.

Ever a romantic at heart, he reads too much into too little, takes more than is given to him, and ends up living out one of his worst nightmares.

No one he works with says anything about his split lip and bruised jaw the next day, but he can feel them staring, and his supervising major looks about ready to give him a whole bloody inquisition over it. Thankfully, he doesn't.

Thomas quits the cricket team, lays low for a while.

He's lucky not to be in prison, and he knows it.

*

Summer comes.

One night he finds himself with his elbows on the windowsill, staring out at the sky, missing what it looked like from Downton — from his room in the attic, from the roof, from the servants' courtyard. 

Civilian housing is better than military housing would have been, but he's still surrounded by gray and brick and grime at every turn, and sometimes he hates it. _God, what was I thinking,_ he asks himself, _what would my mother say._

He left service at an Earl's house to come here, and now he spends half his pay on food and rent.

*

Here, where his mornings, nights and Sundays are his own, where people call him by a title he earned and think he's good at his fucking job, where he does his own housekeeping and only eats what he cares to and doesn't have to worry about anyone else sneaking into his room when he's not there and isn't saying "certainly my Lord" and "indeed my Lady" and "yes Mr Carson" day in and day out, isn't waiting for the other shoe to fall — he's put tacks in the walls of his room, even.

He's had _men_ in his room, even.

*

"…weren't you?"

"Might've been."

"Er, pardon," the stranger says, tossing an apple back and forth between his hands. Thomas wants to snatch it from mid-air. "I'm Daly. Jeremy Daly."

"And I'm not on a cricket team anymore," Thomas says curtly. 

"Come join ours, then, why don't you? We're rubbish at bat."

They are. 

"But not at bowling," Daly adds.

Owing to one half of a lovely couple.

It's _almost_ tempting. Thing is, Thomas had a good reason to quit.

He tells him so. Not kindly.

"Oh, come on, no one good as you stops for long."

_We'll see about that._

*

But he wasn't intending to be done with it forever, anyway, and throwing in the towel just to spite some fielder he ran into at the grocer's seems like a bad idea.

The problem is that their pitch is on the other side of town. It's not like he has a fucking bicycle, and the trams don't run forever. By the time he gets there it's raining, and if these blokes are the sort to quit when it's wet out — they do live in damp, dreary England — it'll all be a waste.

"Barrow, innit? Good to see you!"

They're not.

*

Sometimes he thinks about before the war. 

About back when he was just Thomas, first footman at Downton Abbey, in the household of the Earl of Grantham, and his days were filled with garden parties and fox hunts and drawing room receptions.

Downton Abbey on its own feels like another country to him these days; Downton Abbey before the war may as well be a different planet. He doesn't quite know how he feels about that.

It's been months and months. He's a registered nurse, a bloody wardmaster in a peacetime military hospital. 

He shouldn't even care anymore, should he?

*

The team loses more often than not, but at least it's never his fault when they do. 

And they train just as hard as his old crew did, rain or shine — fact of the matter is, some of them just aren't good, and they never will be. 

Unfortunately, he can't just _say_ that, even if he would have, once.

Besides, if Webster knew that he was a lost cause he probably wouldn't bother to ask Thomas for his help at bat anymore. It's cruel, maybe, bolstering someone he knows will never get anywhere, but who knows? 

He might be surprised.

*

One Sunday evening, he sees a woman who might be Anna going into the train station.

It takes him a minute to deliberate over if it was, and another to determine why he cares.

The verdict: it was her, only took time to recognise her because she wasn't dressed like a maid and she didn't look to be having a splendid time, not that she's _known_ for having a splendid time, especially as he left her, and… 

He doesn't. He doesn't care at all.

But his heart pounds until he's back in his rooms with the door locked and bolted.

*

With autumn comes more cold and more wet.

His hand aches, sometimes.

Most days, treating other people keeps his mind off of it. Other blokes have problems just as he does. Worse than he does, or they wouldn't be in hospital.

But knowing that doesn't stop it from hurting, or from stiffening up or going numb. His nerves are fucked for the rest of his life — his _physical_ nerves, rather, he's perfectly fine upstairs, thank you very much.

The pain's a small price to pay, though, because he wouldn't be, if he'd stuck around in the trenches for any longer.

*

The last match of the season features the same teams as the previous year, and Evans is nowhere to be found.

Cautious, he asks about the absence.

"Moved to Liverpool," says Weller, "back in June. Say, you wouldn't think to come back and join us, would you?"

He's dumbstruck, only manages to shake his head when he starts getting raised eyebrows for it.

Man kept his word.

"Don't think so," Thomas manages. "Be brutal, wouldn't it, like throwing a baby to the wolves."

"And we're the wolves, are we?"

Weller grins, and Thomas smiles back.

It comes to him easily.

*

"We went to school together," Webster says, "Everyone knew they'd end up married. He was… well, you've met him, haven't you? And her the prettiest girl in our class."

 _Sweet on her like everyone else_ , Thomas thinks, bitter. He stops staring at Webster's throat, goes back to watching Frank and Hattie as they spin across the club floor. 

Of all twelve of them, they're the only ones not dancing. 

He'd hoped it meant something.

"Or so they told me."

Thomas looks up.

Webster taps the ash off his cigarette and grins. "Not my type, if you know what I mean."

*

Another Sunday evening, he comes across Anna again — physically. She knocks into him, hurrying her way to the station, and her frantic "sorry, I'm sorry," does something to him.

At least, it does until he sees the look on her face when she lifts her head and realises just who she bumped into.

_"Thomas?!"_

He grits his teeth.

"Er, Mr Barrow," she corrects herself, tentative.

They're standing in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Sergeant Barrow still, actually."

She startles, the way people do as they're falling asleep.

"Erm, if I'm to be back before the gong, I'd best be going…"

*

That night he dreams he's walking back and forth through the gallery of… it's Downton Abbey, as it always was, no soldiers anywhere, but he knows it's the convalescent home somehow. The entire place is eerily empty. 

_Where are all of the patients,_ he wonders, _where are all of the nurses,_ but then he sees Daisy scurrying up the banister of the stairs like a rat, and he decides they've not been woken up yet. 

Not his job, is it.

When he makes to go down to the servants' hall, the door is gone, only smooth wall in its place.

*

There is something comforting about the shape to his days in the hospital — everything is done according to established routine. Everything happens like clockwork. Everything has a proper process, and every process has paperwork.

The hierarchy's not exactly pleasant, but it's unavoidable. And since he must be in it, at least he understands where and how he fits. He's not the cream off the top, but he's not dregs from the bottom, either. He's in-between.

Even so, he knows his place in all this, and he sticks to it.

In the beginning, he'd felt exactly the same way about service.

*

For the first time in his entire life, he has someone to share Christmas with.

Not only that, on the day of he wakes up late — upper class late, ten in the bloody morning late — with a man he likes in his bed. He doesn't have to be anywhere until that evening, and Webster's off until the next morning. 

There's nothing stopping them from staying under the covers for the next six hours.

"Thought they were all about discipline, in the Army."

"Well, I'm not _in_ the Army, now, am I."

Webster tugs him out of bed and kisses him.

*

He meets up with O'Brien in person — at a breakfast cafe in the city centre. She's catching a train to London, and from London another, and then she'll be voyaging off to India on a steamship.

They'd fallen out of touch; her asking to see him came out of the blue. They drink tea and talk about the old days. He walks her to the station. On the platform, she wraps her arms around his neck and tells him she always did know he'd make it out eventually.

In the last three years, he's changed far more than she has.


	2. 1922 - 1924

The realisation that he hasn't got anyone at the Abbey anymore hits him all at once. It's like someone stuck his head into a bucket of ice water and then held it there. O'Brien's in Bombay; they'll probably never see or hear from one another again. And it's not like they were hearing from each other all that often before she left, but if he needed an in, he had one, didn't he?

And now he doesn't.

 _I don't care,_ he tells himself. _That's not me. That's not my life now._

But part of him worries that it could be.

*

"Only a job," says Bill, "Dunno why you're making such a fuss – "

"You  _ would _ say that," Jerry interrupts. "Not everyone shackles together railway cars for a living."

"Hey," Chris snaps, "that's honest work."

He nudges Thomas's knee under the table; Thomas reciprocates.

"Besides, service is different, isn't it," Frank says, thoughtful. "Living where one works… it's rather like having another family."

Or having one to begin with.

Thomas shrugs. "It can be."

"Often is."

"Made a study of it, have you," Thomas mutters.

"My sister was a lady's maid," he returns, with a kind smile. "And my brother's a valet."

*

"Why'd he leave _that_ out?"

"Probably for fear of you getting like you are now."

"And what am I like, exactly?" Thomas asks, pointed. _Don't accuse me of caring,_ he wants to say, _it takes far more than that to impress me._

He follows up the question with a kiss; Chris returns it, eager. When they part, he's got that devious, hungry look in his eye that makes Thomas blush all over.

"I'll tell you what _I'm_ like."

"What's that, then, Mr Webster?"

"Ready to shut up about the manservant to the Prince of Wales, is what."

Thomas obliges him.

*

It's a wonder the whole bloody world doesn't know about the two of them.

Thomas knows he's different for being in love. Better, probably, in a lot of people's eyes, even if he feels like a fool himself. At first everybody commented on the change; nowadays he supposes he must simply come off as a cheerful do-good person. Something he isn't, though he begins wondering if maybe he could be.

…the answer's no, because he doesn't live in a world like that. A world like that doesn't exist.

But, here's a taste for him, of how the other half lives.

*

After several months of ducking around corners and quickening their steps, he and Anna run into one another again — this time earlier in the day. She's leaving the station, not entering it.

"Watch it," he snaps.

She stumbles, only to be caught by some older gentleman. He's upper-middle class; a banker, maybe, stern and paternal.

"Is this man troubling you, young lady?"

There's something dodgy about the way he touches her.

"That's my cousin, sir," Thomas finds himself saying, "We tease, is all."

"That's right," says Anna, shaky.

Resolved, he takes her arm. "You're late. Auntie Cora's been worried sick."

*

After that afternoon, weeks and weeks pass, and though he doesn't change his routine… well, he figures she must've changed hers. Whatever Anna does with her Sundays now, it's not got anything to do with the York Railway Station.

He tries to put it out of his mind, because there's no reason for him to linger over it. It didn't mean anything, after all, he was doing whatever any man in his position would have done. Might as well be a cliché, really, former first footmen escorting ladies' maids to visit their murderer husbands in prison. 

Happens all the time.

*

Anna never liked him anyway, he knows, and it's not like he liked _her,_ but they lived in the same house for years, slept right down the corridor from one another, ate at the same table. For any other people in the world, that would _mean_ something.

Then, he's not like other people. Never has been, assuming you leave out the bits where he was too small to be his own person, and at Downton Abbey they all made sure he knew it. 

But she owes him a favour, and he knows where to find her when he needs it.

*

General Bridgers fought in both Boer Wars, and he lost his son, Captain Bridgers, in the trenches.

"You remind me of him," he says to Thomas one day, and he goes on to describe a young man who where personality is concerned may as well have been the twin of Mr Matthew Crawley, no matter what colour his hair and eyes were. (Black, and gray-blue.)

He'd read about that death in the papers, too.

"If you could just breathe normally for me now, sir," Thomas says, and they get through the remainder of the auscultation without any more uncomfortable anecdotes.

*

_Dear Miss Baxter,_

_Yes, I did receive your first letter, but I happen to be a very busy person these days._

_I write to inform you that as I am no longer in the Earl of Grantham's employment it is very unlikely I shall be able to assist you in finding a position in his household, especially given your newly acquired background. Not to mention that to my knowledge, there are no positions available._

_If, however, you can be patient, I may be able to come up with something "for old times' sake."_

_I am,_

_Your obedient servant,_

_Sergeant Barrow_

*

It's the absolute last thing he'd have expected, is his elder sister's long lost dear old bosom friend showing up and sending him letters out of nowhere after a stint in _prison_ , but if he must be reminded about anything from his childhood, he really would rather it be her.

And he does have an advantage, here. For one: he knows for a fact that the current lady's maid to the Countess of Grantham has not long held her position. For two: someone in the house owes him something.

Someone who has an especially good reason not to judge convicts.

*

_Dear Sgt Barrow,_

_Yes, that can be arranged. I will meet her at the time and place suggested._

_Her Ladyship won't hear a thing about it from me, but really it's less of a problem than you might think. I am not the only person in this house concerned for the wrongfully incarcerated._

_I thought you might also like to hear that your letter gave Mr Carson quite a shock. I didn't share it of course, it was the return address on the envelope which surprised him._

_Mrs Hughes sends her regards._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Anna Smith Bates_

_(Mrs John Bates)_

*

"Blue today, are we, Sergeant?"

"You tell me, Captain," Thomas says. 

At the hospital everyone takes their smoking breaks in the same place, so he's got alliances formed all around the building. It'll come in handy at some point, he's certain. Longevity in a job doesn't make him untouchable, no matter what he does to give himself some security in the position — hasn't he ever learned that already.

Captain Maddox cocks his head at him, a turn in his lip. "I can ask after your well-being, can't I?"

"Lost a patient, sir."

It's true. 

Just isn't the thing that hurts.

*

The whole thing goes off swimmingly, and Phyllis is so anxious to keep in touch with him — or rather, the little Barrow boy she remembers from her childhood — that he doesn't even have to ask for her to put half the house's confidences down onto the page.

Except that once again, when he has the letters coming and he's up to date on it all, knows how the second footman most recently embarrassed himself in front of the Dowager and what the maids are saying about Lady Edith's long stay in the Alps… it seems that he doesn't actually care.

*

Seeing the end coming doesn't make it any easier.

He cries all night, whether because he's sad or frustrated or both he hasn't a clue. Him, a grown man in his thirties, bawling over a lover. Pathetic.

He sends word in to work he's poorly and tries not to wallow: washes up, takes care of chores fallen by the wayside, makes his bed.

It didn't finish in the usual way: no threats, no destruction, no yelling, no _lording._

Thomas loved Chris as an equal, not as a way out. They had something between them, even if now it's over and done.

*

Mutual and necessary though it was, their splitting up leaves him aimless and lonely and desperate. 

He can't tell anyone. 

But certain people have a way of finding out, and on his sort-of-monthly-sort-of-random afternoon with Phyllis Baxter, she backs him into a corner.

"Thomas, you can tell me," she says, gentle, kind-eyed. "I won't… surely you must know by now I never minded."

Too kind.

Pitying.

"How very generous of you, Miss Baxter," Thomas returns coolly, and he leaves her to retrieve their hats and coats.

When he's back:

"I didn't mean to…"

"I know what you meant," he snarls. 

*

He tries to quit the cricket team.

It turns out so did Chris, and seeing as the rest of them aren't bloody stupid…

"Don't see why either of you need to," Frank tells him. 

He has his arm around his shoulders; Thomas is waiting for it to start strangling him.

"Because if you and Hattie got divorced you'd just keep her around, would you?"

Let alone the other thing.

"No risk of that happening," says Frank, blithe. Then he pauses. "Was it that serious?"

Dry wit and a handsome face always do him in, don't they.

"No," Thomas confesses, "but…"

*

It was his first time coming close.

Jerry buys him a beer and asks him a similar question.

"Doesn't matter, does it, since what it is now is over," Thomas snaps.

Then he falters.

These people may have been his friends, they may be acting inexplicably kind in all this, but one wrong move… 

"Look, mate, I see why it'd be uncomfortable," Jerry says slowly, with an awkward pat on the back that makes Thomas flinch. "But far as anyone on the outside's concerned, two of you had a row over a girl."

Of all the cricket teams in Yorkshire.

*

The next time he sees Anna, it's before they make physical contact. She's going into the train station, just like in months past, and at first, nothing seems different… 

But it's mid-morning. Churchgoing hours. Not her usual time and place, to his recollection; she ought to be singing in the pews at St Michael and All Angels.

He tips his hat at her.

"Thomas?"

_How many bloody times…_

"Anna."

"Sorry," she says, and they step aside as others hurry past. "I never thanked you, for…"

"It's been months."

"Yes." She looks away, into the station. "Yes, I suppose it has."

*

In the end he and Chris both stick around, even if only because where _else_ are they going to find ten chaps who don't give a damn about their sex lives?

And if either of them leaves, it'll be Thomas. He's promised himself that. These were Chris's friends first, after all. He managed in fending for himself long enough; there's no reason he can't again.

Besides, he's not convinced yet that this doesn't matter. If he gives any of them a reason, any one of them a _single bloody reason…_

He'll get himself transferred to Leeds or Manchester or somewhere.

*

But nothing happens.

Well. 

Plenty happens. 

Life moves on, only the other blokes don't touch him quite so often or smile just as wide as before. Not that they don't do it at all, they _do,_ just… carefully.

It's halfway through a game, seated with his teammates on the bench, that he realises he hasn't noticed any difference in how they treat _Chris._

"We did all go to school together," Rob says later, matter-of-fact.

"Yeah, I know, but – "

"Look, don't think nobody minds," he continues, not threatening so much as _don't be bloody stupid,_ "but we look after our own."

*

Matches and practices alike are awkward for months, but somehow, he and Chris manage eventually to be friends.

How about that.

He's not even jealous of the man he sees him leaving with.

( _Liar._ )

"No, but, you see, that wouldn't never happen with a woman," Walter tells him, and he misses the ball as he does. "Not in hell. Things end with a woman…"

Thomas catches it.

Fifth bloody time.

"Walter," he says, "I will throw this at you."

Some feet away, Frank calls, "Lewis, if you're not going to swing the bat, give the damn thing to somebody else."

*

The next time he sees Phyllis, she apologises.

"It's been months," he says to her, as he stirs sugar into her tea. "Downton must've fallen far, if you've been able to keep little old me on your mind that whole time."

He slides her mug and saucer across the table.

"Forgot you'd said anything," he adds, lying through his teeth.

"You always were one to hold a grudge," she says, cautious.

Thomas pretends he's not watching as she takes the first sip, pretends he's not pleased with himself when she smiles and makes no adjustments.

"Whatever gave you that idea?"

*

When General Elliot dies — pleural empyema, from a nasty case of bronchitis, the likes of which he's had every year since the war and never before since — his wife sends a heartfelt card along to the ward. It's short and sweet, formal as anything, may as well be a fill-in-the-blank letter from the old days, but something about it hits him deep.

 _Something about it._ No, he knows exactly what; he just doesn't want to think too hard about it. Not happy memories, after all.

Something about it: it's that they got cards just like that at Downton Cottage Hospital.

*

"This time of year? There an occasion?"

"He's been promoted," says Frank wryly. "Got time off in the transition period."

Thomas looks up, curious, then goes back to his book. 

As far as he's concerned, this has nothing to do with him. He'll be cordial to the man while he's here, but the last time this came up he found himself representative for all domestics, and given he's been done with that for nine years now… 

"He's valet to the fucking Prince of Wales, what on Earth's he been promoted to?"

Frank grins.

"Bloody hell," says Bill. "You don't mean – "

*

Frank's younger brother shows up just in time for Thomas to bat once before they're rained out of the pitch. 

When they see him from the bench, Chris lets out a whistle.

"Blimey, he's improved with time."

"Improved," breathes Thomas, heart pounding. He's soaked through and covered in mud and by all rights he ought to be bloody freezing, but he isn't. "From _what,_ a fucking collar advertisement?"

And here he'd thought the elder Ellis was gorgeous.

"You're not so bad looking, yourself, Barrow," says Chris, and he thumps him on the shoulder and goes off to greet the man.

*

Thomas had been prepared for him to be somewhat attractive — most servants who ever see the light of day upstairs are. He'd been prepared for him to have something of an ego. He'd been prepared for everyone to fawn over him, and he'd been prepared to be annoyed about it. Old news. Service is service; it can't be that different whether you're waiting on the King Emperor of the Commonwealth or Sir Nobody of Cumbria. 

He had not been prepared to be kissing him in the Ellis family garden, but he can't say he _minds,_ exactly, now that he is.

*

Richard gives him his calling card and a weeks' worth of pages torn from his diary, tells him to be wise with the former — whatever that's supposed to mean.

The post office isn't open all hours, and the times of his shifts aren't traditional, but Thomas manages to fill in the blanks well enough. He knows how it works, after all, he was a servant, once. It's exactly the same as it used to be, dividing up his days by changes of clothes and bells rung. 

His social calendar starts to align with that of the fucking King of England. 


	3. 1927

"Itinerary's as one would think," Richard says. "All the great houses. You've probably seen it in the papers."

He has.

"Thought I might try to get time off from Downton, go into York for an evening. Mum would be delighted."

"I'll bet she would be," replies Thomas, careful. His time at Downton Abbey was an odd chapter in his life; thinking of it lately has been strange for him. "Just saw her last week, in fact. She asked about you."

"Did she, now?"

"I embellished."

"Wouldn't expect anything less."

"You're lucky she likes me."

"Mum likes any man in uniform."

*

They give him two days off, which is all he needs. He doesn't have anything planned, himself, figures Richard's got things to do and people to see, but they're going to have supper at his house for certain and he'd prefer to show up to it looking presentable with his shirt steamed. He gets the impression Mrs Ellis likes him no matter what he's wearing, but what counts counts.

Leaning into hope some, he also changes the bed linens and makes sure that everything he keeps in his night table drawer is as he'd left it.

It's been long enough.

*

"Thought you said we were meeting at the station," Thomas says, incredulous, and Richard laughs.

"Aren't we?"

It's different when he's in a bloody motorcar.

"What if I'd gone to wait for you on the platform?"

"Well, then I'd've had to come and get you, wouldn't I?"

If they weren't in broad daylight surrounded by people, Thomas would kiss him.

They make do with a firm handshake, instead. 

"You could've taken a train," he says once they're in the car, nagging a little.

Richard puts his hand on his knee and squeezes.

"This way I can be out all night."

*

Mrs Ellis keeps them for ages, as is her wont — but it's fine, when he's here with Richard and not feeling like a hanger-on next to Frank and Kathy and their spouses.

He hasn't seen his own sisters in ages. Unlike the Ellis children, they didn't exactly go about choosing husbands with _will he welcome my deviant brother_ in mind.

Then, the Ellises don't even see their youngest as deviant to begin with.

On their way out the door, Mrs Ellis calls, "you'll be in touch about Christmas, Dick?" and Richard says, "Mum, we've _talked_ about this."

Thomas hates service.

*

They're in a secluded grove on the outskirts of the city: alone, just the two of them, half-dressed, in a Crown-property car.

Or so he'd thought.

"…this one belongs to the Earl, actually. The Royal Household's commandeered it."

Thomas takes Richard's knuckles out of his mouth and raises his eyebrows.

"What, does it make a difference?" Richard asks, teasing.

"No," Thomas insists.

"You left service more than ten years ago."

"But not the bloody house."

"Don't suppose they gave you severance?"

Richard puts his thumb upon Thomas's lower lip and his knee between his legs.

It gets the point across.

*

"Place is a madhouse, by the way. How anyone could stand it…"

They're having tea in Thomas's flat, calm.

"Butler's incorrigible, for one thing, though I don't mind the housekeeper… kitchen staff are rather hysterical, footmen are spineless idiots."

"Sounds like nothing's changed," says Thomas wryly. "How about the ladies' maids?"

"Quiet. I like them, actually."

"So do I."

Richard nods, pensive. "Easy enough to be kind to the rest for the duration, but Christ, I'm already going mad three days in — don't know how you managed seven years, and I work for the King Emperor."

"Didn't have another option."

*

Richard presses him up against the door and kisses him, holds his cheek in hand and nuzzles at the side of his face with his nose when they stop to breathe.

"Can't believe you have to go back _there,_ of all places," grumbles Thomas.

"Wish I didn't," Richard murmurs against his cheek, and he shudders.

"When am I gonna see you again?" he says, near swooning, and Richard pulls away from him, lips closed in a trying-not-to-smile way.

"Christmas."

"Sorry?"

"I'll be giving notice on December first… you got out, didn't you, why can't I?"

Thomas kisses him with ardour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE THIS IS CHRISTMAS FIC AFTER ALL

**Author's Note:**

> [@combeferre on tumblr](https://combeferre.tumblr.com/)


End file.
